Blogging about the bright side since 2010

Married for 8 Years!

As of today, Joe and I have been married for eight years! I had planned on posting a few of our wedding photos in honor of our anniversary. But then I got to looking at them and nearly posted 500. It was such a good day and a fun celebration! (And I happen to be a sucker for wedding photos.)

When I was younger (like, say, 23 when we got married) I thought that the best person to marry was someone who made you laugh and someone you had fun spending time with. Genius, right?

Now that I’m all older and wiser, I realize that it’s all well and good to marry a fun person. But whomever you choose, this is also the person that is truly with you for better or worse… I think when we are standing up in front of all the people saying vows, we choose to focus on the “for better” part and kind of forget that there’s going to be a lot of other things besides picking out dishes at Target and Netflix and chill.

Turns out you’ll have to do taxes together, assemble furniture together, take each other to the emergency room, figure out what to do with a flooded basement in the middle of the night, be subjected to a lifetime of each other’s dirty laundry and dirty dishes, be subjected to each other’s choices in music and movies, forever figure out schedules and childcare and fair ways to split up time between each other’s families, survive the hangry when someone wants to go on a diet, cope with painful losses, install carseats, clean vomit out of said carseats, clean up middle-of-the-night pet/baby/kid bodily fluid messes, and do a lot of freakin’ paperwork together whenever you want to make some sort of life change.

So I would like to tell my younger self (something I almost never tell her):

YOU WERE RIGHT.

YES. Please marry the person you have the most fun with and who makes you laugh. Because life gets quite hard and you’ll really need to laugh. Marry the person that makes all of that above stuff seem like nothing. Marry the person that you can sit with in a car for hours and hours and talk even if you don’t even like each other’s choice of music. Marry the person who loves you as you are but inspires you to be the best version yourself. Marry the person who supports your dreams and goals no matter how silly or far-fetched they seem. (I remember the time I thought I might have a viable business baking and selling homemade pot pies and Joe was all
“So, when do we start?”)

Marry the person who still thinks you’re smokin’ hot even when you are wearing the shabbiest sweats ever while you are elbow-deep in a bag of Doritos with your hair in a pineapple on your head (while your are ten months pregnant). Marry the person who thinks the world of you but also thinks of you in little ways and, fixes your wiper blades, and picks you up a random distressed planter or your favorite chocolate (not because they are sorry about something, but just because they just know you’d love it).

So even though I’m older, wiser, less air-brushed, and realize that life and adulting is a lot of work and dealing with difficult things, I would not dream of changing out my life partner. Thank you for 13 years together, 8 years of marriage, 3 kids, and so many good times! I loved you a whole lot on our wedding day, but EVEN MORE now. Happy Anniversary, Joe!